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PROPAGANDA IN 
HISTORY 



By LYON G. TYLER 

RICHMOND, Va. 



Second Edition 
Revised 



RICHMOND: 

RICHMOND PRESS, INC., PRINTERS 

1921 



L. / 7 ^ 




r 



Propaganda In History. 

During the World War we heard a great deal of propaganda, 
and the word was used generally in a bad sense. But there is 
really nothing harmful in the word itself. It signifies only a means 
of publicity, which, when applied properly and legitimately seiTes 
a very good purpose. The Germans applied it improperly. They 
sent to this country millions of dollars to buy up newspapers and 
newspaper men to abuse the allies and make palatable their own 
conduct, too often brutal in the extreme. Propaganda is a form 
of advertisement, and it is only when advertisements are resorted to 
for the purpose of spreading erroneous conceptions that they are to 
be condemned. Qi^v advertisements are at all time pernicious. 

A feature especially popular in this country is propaganda ap- 
plied to history. This consists in using striking characters and 
events of the past to give importance to present matters. As long 
as the truth is told much good must result, for the past contains 
vast archives of experience, from which valuable information may 
be had. The reverse happens when to give prominence to particu- 
lar ends, historical matter is exploited at the expense of truth. 

These thoughts are suggested by what is so often read in the 
newspapers and periodicals of the North and even in books which 
have a more serious character. By sheer dint of assertion, taken 
up and published as if by concerted arra.ngement, certain things 
are given a character that never did belong to them. The idea 
seems to be with many who are active in the matter that the real 
truth makes no difference provided the multitude can be got to 
accept a certain view. This is the very essence of German propa- 
gandism, so much feared and condemned during the World War. 
But this is not true of all, for there are some who appear to be 
swept along by a force which they are powerless to resist. 

Let me cite some of the cases which have been made the sub- 
ject of this kind of exploitation. 

1. There is a manifest disposition to place Plymouth before 
Jamestown. It is an old story and goes back a hundred and fifty 
years to the historian Hutchinson, who asserted in his history 
of Massachusetts that the Virginia colony had virtually failed and 



that the Pilgrim colony was the means of reviving it. How far 
from the truth Hutchison strayed in his statement is shown by 
Bradford's contemporary narrative "The Plymouth Plantation," 
which proves veiy clearly that it was the successful establishment 
of the Virginia colony that induced the Puritans to leave Hol- 
land for America, in preference to some Dutch plantation like 
Guiana. Sir Edwyn Sandys was the patron as well of the Puritan 
colony as of the Virginia colony. They sailed under a patent of 
the Virginia Company of London granted through his auspices, 
and when by miscalculation they landed outside of the dominion 
of the Virginia Company the compact adopted by them in the 
cabin of the Maijfloiver followed the terms of the original patent. 
It was, indeed, owing to the Jamestown Colony that landing was 
at all possible. Six years before. Sir Thomas Gates had sent 
Argall from Jamestown, who had driven the French from their 
settlements in Nova Scotia and on the coast of Maine, and thus 
prevented them from occupying the coast of Massachusetts as they 
were about to do. 

So far from the truth was Hutchinson's statement that in 
1630 the Virginia colony had virtually failed, that even after the 
massacre of 1632 Virginia had over nine hundred colonists, and 
the Plymouth colony but one hundred and fifty, and these, accord- 
ing to Bradford, were in a starving condition from which they were 
rescued by a sliip of Capt. John Huddleston, a member of the 
Virginia colony. In 1639 when the Plymouth colony had 300 
inhabitants, the Jamestown colony had 3,000. 

But recent writers do not even admit the reservation of Hutch- 
inson of a prior thoagli vanishing Jamestown. That ancient settle- 
ment, with all thpt it stands for, is actually to be snubbed out of 
recognition, and the claim is now boldly advanced that the Ply- 
mouth settlement was the first colony and all Americans the virtual 
output of that plantaticm. Jamestown is not to be allowed even 
a share in the upbuilding of America. Can anything be' more 
astonishing, and where is the "New England conscience" that it 
does not revolt against this perversion of the truth? 

Among the many recent instances of this historic prevarication 
which have fallen under my notice, reference may be made to the 
columns of the Saturday Evening Post for February 7, 1980, to 
the World's Work for November, 1919, and to Mr. James M. Beck's 



book, *'The War and Humanity," published by G. P. Putnam's 
Sons in 1917. No plea of ignorance can be advanced for these 
writers, and, on the other hand, it is impossible to believe that they 
deliberately falsified. They come under the class of propaganda 
victims rather than propaganda sinners. They were swept on 
against their own better knowledge by the spirit of propagandism 
so deadly to the very existence of truth. 

As to the first of these, the article in the Saturday Evening 
Post, the person who composed the editorial entitled "Sanctuary," 
uses the following words : 

"Two ships, the Mayflower and the Buford mark epochs in the 
history of America. The Mayflower brought the first of the 
builders to this country, the Buford has taken away the first 
destroyer." 

We learn from the Richmond News Leader for March 1, 1920, 
that Mrs. Elizabeth Henry Lyons, the historian general of the 
National Society of the Colonial Dames in the State of Virginia, 
wrote a protest against this statement and received a reply vir- 
tually admitting that the editors knew differently when they made 
it. Their words were that in "a strict sense" Mrs. Lyons was "his- 
torically correct," but that "they did not believe in this narrow 
sense our editorial is likely to be misleading even to school boys, 
who are thoroughly familiar with these dates in American history." 
gThe dates referred to were 1607, when the Sarah Constant and 
her two companion ships brought the real founders of the nation 
to Jamestown, and 1620, when the Mayfloiver brought the Puritans 
to Plymouth in Massachusetts. 

There is a hint here that in a hroad sense the article in the paper 
was correct, but on this point the learned editors did not en- 
lighten Mrs. Lyons. There. is no broader word than en-or and no 
narrower word than truth. It is the Good Book which says: 
"Enter ye by the narrow gate ; for wide is the gate and broad the 
way that leadeth to destruction." 

The plain truth is that neither in its origin nor in the institu- 
tions established in New England did the Plymouth Colony lay 
the foundations of the American Commonwealth. It was ante- 
dated by Jamestown and the Jamestown Assembly. The 41 signers 
of the Mayflower Compact did not form a democracy but an aris- 
tocracy and only cautiously admitted any newcomers into partner- 



ship with them. After twenty years less than forty per cent, of 
the people at Plymouth had any share in the government (Palfrey, 
New England, II, 8). And as the years rolled hy the range of 
power became more and more restricted till it resembled the sys- 
tem prevailing in Massachusetts, into which Plymouth and its 
associated towns were eventually absorbed in 1691, 

And how was it in Massachusetts, which set the example not 
only for Plymouth, but for all the other New England colonies, 
even Rhode Island in the end. To say that the government there 
from its inception was an aristocracy is putting it mild. It was a 
tyranny of the sternest type whose equal in history can scarcely be 
found anywhere. 

American institutions of today are democratic, and are tested 
by the law of reason and nature. On the contrary, in New England 
the suffrage was confined during the seventeenth century to a few 
favored members of the Congregational Church, and everything 
was tested by the stern decrees of the Old Testament. In Massa- 
chusetts the law divided the people into "the better class," "those 
above the ordinary degree," and "those of mean condition." Though 
there were annual elections the magistrates had no difficulty in 
retaining office for life through the law of preference, which uni- 
versally prevailed, and the town meetings were little oligarchies 
governed by the minister and a select clique.^ So the Eev. Mr. 
Stone aptly described Massachusetts of the seventeenth century 
*'as a speaking aristocracy in the face of a silent democracy." 

Though the Charter of King William, in 1691, introduced sev- 
eral very important reforms in Massachusetts, and his firm hand 
in suppressing tyranny in all the other New England colonies was 
strongly felt, the essential principles of the Puritan governments 
remained the same. To the very end of the colonial days the dis- 
tinctions in society were observed with such punctilious nicety that 
the students at Harvard and Yale were arranged according to the 
dignity of their birth and rank, and the ballot was very limited. 
Weeden in his Social and Economical History of New England 
sums up the character of the New England institutions in the 
words that "they were democratic in form, but aristocratic in the 



iFor the working of the hallot In New England, see Baldwin in 
American Historical Papers, IV, p 81. 



substance of the administration." By no stretch of the imagina- 
tion/' says Dr. Charles M. Andrews, Professor of History in Yale 
University, "can the political conditions in any of the New Eng- 
land colonies be called popular or democratic. Government was in 
the hands of a very few men." And even today some of the worst 
inequalities in elections prevail in the New England States.^ 

On the other hand, Virginia, where the first colony was planted, 
which afforded inspiration to all the rest, appealed from the first 
to the law of nature and of reason, which constitutes the very es- 
sence of the democratic principle. She had the first English in- 
stitutions, as shown in the first jury trial, the first popular elec- 
tions, and the first representative body of law makers, and, before 
any Puritan foot had planted itself upon Plymouth Eock, courts 
for the administration of justice and for the recordation of deeds, 
mortgages and wills, were established facts. Instead of resting 
on church membership as in Massachusetts, the House of Bur- 
gesses, which was the great controlling body in Virginia, rested 
for more than a hundred years upon universal suffrage. There 
was, it is true, an apparent change in 1670 when the possession 
of a freehold was made the condition of voting, but it was not a 
real change, since the law did not define the extent of the free- 
hold until as late as 1736; and even under the law of 1736, as 
sliown by Dr. J. F. Jameson,^ many more people voted in Virginia 
down to the American Revolution than did in Massachusetts. There 
was a splendid and spectacular body of aristocrats in colonial Vir- 
ginia, but they did not have anything like the political power and 
prestige of the New England preachers and magistrates. 

That popular institutions were a dominating feature in Vir- 
ginia is the evidence of Alexander Spotswood, who writing, in 
1713, declared* that the Assembly which met that year was com- 
posed of representatives of the plain people; of Governor Robert 
Dinwiddle, who, in 1754, complained' of the House of Burgesses 
for their "constant encroachment on the prerogatives of the Crown'' 



2Jones, The Rotten Boroughs of New England in North American 
Review, CXCVII, p. 486. 

3New York Nation, April 27, 1893. 

^Letters of Alexander Spotswood, II, p. 1. 

'The Official Records of Robert Dinwiddie, I, p. 100. 



() 

and "their Republican ways of thinking;" of Rev. Andre\f 
Burnaby, an English traveler, who, in 1759, wrote of the public 
or political character of the Virginians, as haughty and impatient 
of restraint, and "scarcely able to bear the thought of being con- 
trolled by any superior |X)wer;" of Col. Landon Carter, of "Sa- 
bine Hall, "who attributed^ his own defeat, in 1765, to his un- 
popularity with the common voters, who were jealous of any aris- 
tocratic pretentions; of J. F. D. Smythe, another British traveler 
before the American Revolution, who spoke of the haughtiness of 
the great middle class, who comprised half of the population; of 
Edmund Randolph, who referring to the same period described^ 
the aristocracy of Virginia as "little and feeble, and incapable of 
daring to assert any privilege clashing with the rights of the 
people at large;" of Colonel St. George Tucker, who denied^ that 
there was such a thing as "dependence of classes" in Virginia, and 
declared that the aristocracy of Virginia was as "harmless a set 
of men as ever existed;" and finally Thomas Jefferson, who, in 
1814, writing^ to John Adams, while referring to the traditionary 
reverence paid to certain families in Massachusetts and Connec- 
ticut, "which had rendered the officers of those governments nearly 
hereditary in those families," derided the power of the aristocracy 
in Virginia both before and after the Revolution. 

If, indeed, tliere was any doubt where popular institutions 
had the stronger hold, the doubt is removed when we notice what 
happened when the two communities for the first time had the 
opportunity of directing without foreign restraint, the government 
of their own country. Soon after independence was secured, Vir- 
ginia became the headquarters of the Democratic-Republican 
Party — the party of popular ideas — and New England became the 
headquarters of the Federalist Party — the party of aristocratic 
ideas. Real democracy was brought to ISTew England for the first 
time in 1804, when Thomas Jefferson carried all the New England 



^William and Mary Quarterly, XVI, 259. 
vHenry, Patrick Henry, I, 209. 
^William and Mary College Quarterly. XXII, 252. 
9JMd., XXIII, 227. 



States but Connecticut. It was not fully accepted till 1816 vvlien 
the Federalist Party passed finally out of existence. 

In the work of making a constitution for the new government 
and of organizing it, Virginia, as John Fiske says, furnished 
"four out of the five constructive statesmen engaged" — Washing- 
ton, Jefferson, Madison and Marshall, Not one of them was of 
Puritan stock. The fifth was Alexander Hamilton, a native of the 
West Indies and a New Yorker by adoption. In the matter of 
extending our territories it was the cavalier, George Eogers Clark, 
that conquered the Northwest Territory, now represented by five 
great States. And Louisiana, Florida, Texas, California, New 
Mexico and all the West were added to the Union by Virginian 
and Southern Presidents, thus trebling the area of the Eepublic 
and making it a continental power. Had the Puritan influence, 
which opposed these annexations of territory, prevailed, the 
United States would be confined to-day to a narrow strip along 
the Atlantic Coast. 

As a matter of fact, the rightful name of the Republic is the 
historic name of Virginia (first given by the greatest of English 
queens and accepted by the Pilgrim Fathers in the Mayflower 
compact). "United States of America," are merely words of de- 
scription. They are not a name. 

Now as to the writer, in the World's Worl\ This is no less a 
person than William S^owden Sims, an admiral in the United 
States Navy. In an article, entitled "The Return of the May- 
flower," he describes how Great Britain welcomed our navy at 
the outset of our participation in the war with a moving picture 
film which depicted how in 1620 a few Englishmen had landed 
in North America and laid the foundations of a new state, based on 
English conceptions of justice and liberty, how out of the dis- 
jointed colonies they had founded one of the mightiest nations of 
history, and how when the liberties of mankind were endan- 
gered, the descendants of the "old Mayflower pioneers" had in 
their turn crossed the ocean — this time going eastward to fight for 
the traditions of the race. Admiral Sims makes this comment : 

"The whole story appealed to the British masses as one of the 
great miracles of history — a single miserable little settlement in 
Massachusetts Bay expanding into a continent overflowing with 
resources and wealth — a shipload of men, women and children 



8 

developing in three centuries into a nation of more than 100,000,- 
000 people. And the arrival of our destroyers, pictured on the 
film, informed the British people that all this youth and energy 
had been thrown upon their side of the battle." 

N'ot a hint of Jamestown, not a word of tribute to the men, 
who, in the early days before Plymouth Eock, laid down their lives 
by thousands that this great continent might be saved from French 
and Spanish dominion and Plymouth itself might exist. 

Nothing more aptly describes the effect of this propagandist 
program than its acceptance and exploitation in England thTough 
the moving picture film described by Admiral Sims. The English 
managers cared nothing between Jamestown and Plymouth, but 
were bent from their natural regard for truth, by the wish to 
please the present dominant influence in America, which they 
correctly located northward. 

Finally, as to Mr. Beck, in his book, entitled "The War and 
Humanity," which Theodore Roosevelt endorsed with a "Fore- 
word," no one can doubt that he knew better when he wrote the 
words which follow. They were part of an address delivered by 
him in 1916 at a luncheon, given to him in London by the Pil- 
grim Society of that city, when Viscount Brice and other emi- 
nent Englishmen were present. And yet he must not be judged 
too harshly. Like Admiral Sims, he was the helpless victim of 
propaganda. Mr. Beck said: 

"Never was a nation more dominated by a tradition than the 
United States by the tradition of its political isolation. It has its 
root in the very beginning of the American Commonwealth. In 
nine generations no political party and a few public men have 
ever questioned its continued efficacy. The pioneers who came in 
1620 across the Atlantic to Plymouth Eock and founded the 
American Commonwealth desired like tTie intrepid Kent in King 
Lear 'to shape their old course in a country new,' so that the 
spirit of detachment from Europe was emplanted in the very souls 
of the pioneers who conquered the virgin forests of America." 

Mark what Mr. Beck said : "The pioneers who came in 1620 
across the Atlantic to Plymouth Rock and founded the American 
Commonwealth." Not a word of the men who came in the Sarah 
Constant, the Goodspeed and the Discoverey, and prepared the way 
at Jamestown for all future colonization of America. 



2. The second myth which has been extensively circulated is 
that the Plymouth settlers came to America for religious freedom. 
As a matter of fact, they left England for Holland because they 
were persecuted, and they left Holland for America, not because 
they were persecuted by the Dutch, but, as Bradford narrates, 
because they were in danger of being absorbed in the body of the 
Dutch nation by natural causes. Charles M. Andrews, in a re- 
cent work, declares that with th*^ single exception of giving to 
New England the congregational form of worship, these humble 
and simplfi settlers were "without importance in the world of 
thought, literature or education." 

The settlers who came with John Winthrop in 1630 were the 
real builders of Massachusetts, which for a century and a half 
was the enemy of free thought. The persecuted in England turned] 
persecutors in America, and the colonial disputes with England 
turned upon the religious and political tyranny which the Puri- 
tans erected in jSTew England. Far from religious convictions 
being the only driving force that sent hundreds of men to New 
England, hardly a fifth of the people in Massachusetts were pro- 
fessed Christians ; and yet it was this fifth that had the power and 
taxed and persecuted all the resi The liberty they wanted from 
England was the liberty to harass the majority of the population 
which did not agree with them. Seen at this distance of time Eng- 
land showed a marvel of patience in dealing with the people of 
Massachusetts in the 17th century. And vet there is not an 
instance of severity which has not had its respectable defenders, 
and Charles Francis Adams, Jr., in his "Massachusetts — Its His- 
torians and Its History," takes notice of how these apologists 
have in their histories "struggled" and "squirmed" and "shuffled" 
in the face of the record. 

3. The third myth of which I shall take notice is one strangely 
endorsed by Charles Francis Adams himself in the same book. 
He makes the remarkable statement that the Massachusetts Con- 
stitution of 1780, written by his great-grandfather, John Adams, 
first fixed the principles of the American written constitution, 
and pioneered the way to the Federal Constitution of eight years 
later. This assertion has been taken up and repeated by many 
pel sons since, till it is becoming rapidly accepted as a fact by the 
writing and reading public of the North. As in the ease of James- 



10 

town, George Mason and the Virginia Constitution of 1776 are 
ignored and made to suffer from a propaganda of untruth, 
j 4. Not to mention numerous other subjects of propagandism, 

there is the Lincoln myth. Hardly a single paper published north 
of Mason and Dixon's line can be taken up without the reader 
seeing something about this wonderful hero of the North. We 
all know that the North started out with making a hero of John 
Brown, but abandoned him for the much more desirable character 
of Mr. Lincoln. His assassination gave propagandists a good 
starting point, and since then never has propaganda been more 
active. Washington is even relegated to the background, and a 
highly worthy and eminent historian, Dr. Albert Bushnell Hart, 
calls Lincoln "The First American." The ideality given him is 
chiefly based upon a great fabrication sedulously taught and in- 
< eulated that Lincoln fought the South for the abolition of slavery 
of the negroes. This was denied to the very last by Lincoln him- 
self, but is exploited in the recently published play of Mr. Drink- 
water, an Englishman, as it has been by hundreds of other writers. 

The mischievousness of this Lincoln propaganda idea was ex- 
hibited recently to the full by Eev. Charles Ftancis Potter, pastor 
of the Lenox Avenue Unitarian Church, New York, in an address 
delivered on March 7, 1920, at Earl Hall, Columbia University, 
and reported in the "Sun and New York Herald." This gentleman 
characterizes Lincoln as the "future social Christ" of America, 
and prophesied the coming of an "American Church" and an 
"American Bible," in which people "will find in parallel columns 
the stories of Christ and of Lincoln." 

Absurd and blasphemous as this hysterical prophecy may ap- 
pear to some, it may, nevertheless, come true. What the Eoman 
Senate achieved by decree in the case of their emperors, may in 
this day be more certainly accomplished by money and propaganda. 
Wlien the most elemental facts in the history of the United States 
are snubbed and ignored, as in the case of Jamestown, it is not 
at all surprising that the character of Lincoln is so represented by 
the Northern press that the true Lincoln is no longer recognizable. 
Everything in any way tending to lessen his importance is studi- 
ously kept in the background. 

The writer certainly has no wish to detract from Lincoln's 
real merits. That he was a man of ability and originality can 



11 

scarcely be questioned, but his intellectuality was not of that degree 
to place him in the same class with Washington, Jefferson, Frank- 
lin, Hamilton, Marshall, Madison, Calhoun, Clay and Webster 
These men attracted the public attention from their early man- 
hood, and profoundly influenced the country throughout their 
lives. But Lincoln was practically an unknown factor till his 
nomination as President in 1861, and his influence was confined 
to the four years of the war. There can be no doubt that his assas- 
sination was a fortunate thing for his fame. 

Nor does Lincoln appear naturally as venomous as many of his 
party. It is doubtless true that he would have preferred mild meas- 
ures instead of severe ones. But this is as much as can be said, 
and to accomplish success he had no compunction or scruples what- 
ever. 

Let as consider the claims of Lincoln to the ideal character in 
history which has been imputed to him. 

It is impossible to associate idealism with coarseness, and Lin- 
coln, judged by every test of historic evidence, was a very coarse 
man. There is no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of his 
friend and admirer, Ward H. Lamon, who declared that "in his 
tendency to tell storie? of the grosser sort, Lincoln was restrained 
by no presence and no occasion." Herndon, who was his law part- 
ner, says that "he loved a story, however extravagant or vulgar, 
if it had a good point," and Don Piatt declares that he managed 
to live through the cares and responsibilities of the war only by 
reason of his coarse mold. After his election Piatt saw much of 
Lincoln, who told stories, "no one of which will bear printing," 
and Hugh McCulloch tells of "the very funny stories" of Mr. 
Lincoln during the war, after hearing of Sheridan's victory in the 
Valley of Virginia — stories, he says, "which would not be lis- 
tened to with pleasure by very refined ears." And General Mc- 
Clellan said "his stories were seldom refined." 

Indeed, what kind of an ideal man is he who could open a 
Cabinet meeting called to discuss the Emancipation proclamation 
with reading foolish things from Artemus Ward, and, when visiting 
the field of Sharpsburg, freshly soaked with the blood of thousands 
of brave men, could call for the singing of a ribald song. ?^° 



loDon Piatt in Rice, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, p. 486; 
George Edmunds (Mrs. Minor Meriwether), Facts and Falsehoods, 
73-90. 



12 

Certainly it would never do to put Lincoln's letter^ ^ to Mrs, 
Browning on the subject of marriage in a column parallel with the 
stories of Christ. Its grotesque humor, its coarse suggestions and 
its base insin^^ations against the virtue of a lady to whom he had 
proposed and by whom he had been rejected, are shocking enough 
without subjecting it to such a test. 

Mr. Lincoln's kindness in individual cases and professions of 
charity in his messages, which have been greatly exploited, by no 
means prove that he had any exalted sense of humanity. The 
recognized expression of humanity among nations is the inter- 
national law, and Lincoln and his government acted repeatedly 
contrary to it. 

How stands history in regard to the claim of humanity? 
Here is the testimony of the late Charles Francis Adams, a Fed- 
eral Brigadier General, and President of the Massachusetts His- 
torical Society: "Our own methods during the last stages of the 
the war was sufficiently described by General Sheridan, when dur- 
ing the Franco-Prussian war, as the guest of Bismarck, he de- 
clared against humanity in warfare, contending that the correct 
policy was to treat a hostile population with the utmost rigor, 
leaving them, as he expressed it, 'Nothing but their eyes to weep 
with over the war.'" The doctrine that thero must be no hu- 
manity in warfare proclaimed by Sheridan was also voiced by v 
Sherman in his letter to General Grant March 9, 1864: "Until \ 
we can repopulate Georgia it is useless for us to occupy it, but the 
utter destruction of its roads, houses and people will cripple their 
military resources * * * I can make the march and make Georgia 
howl." General Halleck wanted the site of Charleston, thick with 
the heroic memories of the Revolution, sowed with salt, and Gen- 
eral Grant, in his letters to General David Hunter and General 
Sheridan, issued orders to make the beautiful Valley of Virginia 
"a barren waste." Nothing need be said of the ferocious spii'it of 
the lesser tribe of Federal commanders. 

And Lincoln, in spite of the fine catchy sentiment oS liis 
Gettysburg speech, gave his sanction to the same policy when he 
said in response to a protest against his employment of negro 



iiLamon, Life of Lincoln, 1872, p. 181. Nicolay and Hay, Letters 
and Speeches of Al>raJiam Lincoln, I, 17-19. 



13 

troops : "No human power can subdue this rebellion without the 
use of the emancipation policy and every other policy calculated 
to weaken the moral and physical forces of the rebellion." 

Secretary Chase, in his diary, shows that on July 21, 1862, in 
a Cabinet meeting the President expressed himself as "averse to 
arming the negroes," but shortly after, on August 3, 1862, the 
President said on the same question that "he was pretty well cured 
of any objections to any measure except want of adaptedness to 
putting down the Eebellion." To the spoliators Hunter, Sheridan 
and Sherman, he wrote his enthusiastic commendations and not a 
word of censure. 

By an act of Congress, approved July 17, 1862, and pub- 
lished with an approving proclamation by Lincoln, death, im- 
prisonment or confiscation of property were denounced on five 
million white people in the South and all their abettors and aiders 
in the North. To reduce the South into submission Lincoln in- 
stituted on his own motion a blockade, a means of war so extreme 
that despite its legality under the International Law, it evoked 
from the Germans the most savage retaliation when applied to 
them. He threatened with hanging as pirates Southern privateers- 
men and as guerillas regularly commissioned partisans. He sus- 
pended the cartel of excliange, and when the Federal prisoners 
necessarily fared badly for lack of food on account of the blockade 
and the universal devastation, he retorted their sufferings upon 
the Confederate prisoners — thousands of whom perished of cold 
and starvation in the midst of plenty. Indeed, he refused to see 
or hear a committee of Federal prisoners permitted by Mr. Davis 
to visit Washington in the interest of the suffering prisoners at 
Andersonville. Lord Palmerston, the British Prime Minister, de- 
nounced in Parliament Butler's order against the women of New 
Orleans as "too indecent to be put in the English language," but 
Lincoln neither had it rescinded nor rebuked the author of it.^^ 
And such was his idea of popular government that he gave per- 



i2This order was directed against any "gesture" of a woman ex- 
pressive of contempt of a Federal soldier, but in the American Revolu- 
tion the women of Boston appear to have regarded spitting at the 
British prisoners taken at Saratoga as patriotic. (See Lady Riedesel's 
Journal.) 



14 

mission to the tenth j^art of sss^^ the people of a rebellious State 
to form a government for the State. Indeed, private relief which 
even the Germans allowed in the late war to prisoners, was not 
always permitted by the Northern authorities in the War for 
Southern Independence. A notable instance of refusal was af- 
forded in December, 1864, when certain ladies of England asked 
permission to distribute $85,000 among the Confederate prisoners. 
Mr. Charles Francis Adams, the United States Minister, became 
humanely the medium of their request, but Mr. Seward, the Secre- 
tary of State, made refusal in terms as insulting almost to Mr. 
Adams as to the charitable ladies concerned. Lincoln had a fine 
opportunity in this case to show that he meant what he said of 
^'charity" in one of his messages, but he did not interfere. 

Medicines were made contraband, and to justify the seizure of 
neutral goods at sea a great enlargement of the principle of the 
*^ultimate destination" was introduced into the International Law. 
The property of non-combatants was seized everywhere without 
compensation, and within the areas embraced by the Union lines, 
the oath of allegiance was required of both sexes above sixteen 
years of age under penalty of being driven from their homes. 
Houses, barns, villages and towns were destroyed in the South, and 
in the Korth by the authority of the President thirty-eight thou- 
sand persons are said to have been arrested and confined as pri- 
oners witliout trial or formal charge. Even the actf for which 
Lincoln has been most applauded in recent days — his emancipation 
proclamation — stands on no really humanitarian ground. 

He declared to a committee of clergymen from Chicago that in 
issuing his emancipation proclamation he would look only to its 
effect as a war measure, independent of its 'legal" or "constitu- 
tional" character or of "its moral nature in view of the possible con- 
sequences of insurrection or massacre in the Southern States." 
This declaration, which involved directly the admission that, if 
he were once convinced that emancipation would contribute to end- 
ing the war, he would proclaim it regardless of massacre, is not 
exactly such as would recommend him as a champion of humanity 
to the Southern people. Massacre of women and children is a 
dreadful thing. 

Wlien we come to examine Lincoln's statecraft, it appears to 
indicate a lack of decision utterly at variance with tlie inordinate 



15 

estimate placed upon his abilities by modern propagandists. These 
people never tire of blaming Mr. Buchanan for not at once using 
force to suppress the "rebellion," and yet have not a word of 
censure against Lincoln for allowing a whole month to pass with- 
out taking any action. That he declared in his inaugural ad- 
dress that he intended to hold the forts and public property was 
no more than what Mr. Buchanan had also said, and this declara- 
tion was subject to developments. Even James Schouler, in his 
history, states that "so reticent, indeed, of his plans had been 
the new President, while sifting opinions through the month, that 
it seemed as though he had no policy, but was waiting for his Cabi- 
net to frame one for him." Is this the kind of appearance that 
a President who is expected to lead in matters should assume be- 
fore the nation? 

After the meeting of the Cabinet on March 15, 1861, in which 
five of the members opposed action, Lincoln's mind more and more 
tended to the same conclusion. It is idle to say, as many of his 
panegyrists do, that Lincoln had no knowledge of Seward's as- 
surances to Judge Campbell that the troops would be withdrawn 
from Fort Sumter. Mr. Schouler is an admirer, but he cannot 
agree with this view and asks very pertinently why if this was 
the case, Lincoln should have agreed to give notice of a contrary 
action. 

It appeare, indeed, that the policy of giving up Fort Sumter 
went to the extent of the preparation of an editorial for a New 
York paper to defend Lincoln, — a copy of which was furnished 
Gov. Francis Pickens, of South Carolina, "hy one very near the 
most intimate counsels of the President of the United States."^^ 
But after signing an order for withdrawing the troops, Lincoln 
reconsidered when the governors of seven of the Northern States, 
which were under control of the tariff interests, assembled in Wash- 
ington about the first of April, 1861, and protested against it. 

That the final determination turned on the tariff question is 
not surprising when one considers the obstinacy of the North in 
adhering to protection in 1833. Only a miracle saved the country 
at that time from war. On March 16, 1861, Stanton, who had been 



isFrancis Pickens' Letter in William and Mary College Quarterly, 
XXIV, 78-84. 



16 

a member of Buchanan's Cabinet, wrote to the ex-President that 
"the Eepublicans are beginning to think that a monstrous blunder 
was made in the tariff bill (the Morrill tariff included ranges 
from 50 to 80 per cent.), that it will«*ut off the trade of New 
York, build up New Orleans and the Southern ports and leave 
the government no revenue," There was a Confederate tariff of 
from ten to twenty per cent., and Lincoln's fears of it were 
ultimately excited. 

So on April 1, Seward materially changed his attitude by 
placing in Judge Campbell's hands a written memorandum to 
the effect that the President might desire to supply Fort Sumter, 
but would not do so without giving notice. On April 4 Lincoln 
had an interview with Col. John B. Baldwin, who came from the 
Virginia Convention, and in response to an appeal told him he had 
come too late, and asked "what would become of his tariff if he 
allowed those men at Montgomery to open Charleston as a port 
of entry with their ten per cent, tariff?"^* That day Lincoln 
drafted instructions to Major Anderson at Fort Sumter that relief 
would be sent, and ordered him to hold the fort. Notice was given 
to Gov. Pickens of South Carolina, but it reached him only as 
the first part of the relief squadron was leaving New York. This 
scarcely deserved the ascription of a reasonable or honorable notice.* 
The same sort of uncertainty and vacillation hedged about 
Lincoln's action on Emancipation. He suppressed several meas- 
ures looking to that end by his generals, and on Sept. 13, 1862, 
declared that Emancipation was absolutely futile and likened the 
/ policy to "the Pope's bull against the comet." He asked: '^ould 
,,^ tion in the Rebel States ? Is there a single court or magistrate 
2jny word free the slaves when I cannot even enforce the Constitu- 
or individual who would be influenced by it there ?"^^ And yet on 
September 23, he decided to do what he had refused to do ten days 
before. The only circumstance which had happened in the interval 
was the battle of Sharpsburg, but this certainly did not affect the 



i4Gordon, Life of Jefferson Davis, 124. 

*See "Lincoln and Fort Sumter," in Tyler's Quarterly Historical 
and Genealogical Magazine, II, 211-214. 

isNicolay and Hay, Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, VIII, 
30, 31. 



17 

substance of the objections which he had urged on Sept. 13. No 
court, nor magistrate, nor individual in the South was by that bat- 
tle put in better mind as to the question. In the North the effect 
of the proclamation, according to Lincoln himself, looked soberly 
in the face is not very satisfactory," The Eepublicans were de- 
feated in the elections which followed, and Mr. Ehodes, tlie his- 
torian, writes that "no one can doubt that it (the proclamation of 
emancipation) was a contributing force." It is difficult to under- 
stand what single fact places Lincoln's action on a higher plane 
than that of Lord Dunmore during the American Revolution. 

Nevrtheless, the propagandists have been successful in dis- 
seminating the idea that Lincoln was the great emancipator and 
that all his shuffling and equivocation was fine evidence of con- 
summate leadership on his part. 

The propagandist has in similar manner smoothed away all 
exceptions affecting the relations of President Lincoln to his 
Cabinet. And yet such exceptions existed, if any confidence is to 
be placed in Charles Francis Adams, Sr., who in his "Memorial 
Address" on Seward represents him as practically subordinate to 
his Secretary of State. And while Gideon Welles, Secretary of the 
Navy, repels the charge and claims that the President was the 
dominating mind, his narrative of the incredible liberties taken by 
Seward, and the President's indifference to them, till roused by 
others to a proper sense of his dignity, does not redound much to 
Lincoln's credit. "Welles complains much of the assumptions of 
Seward, but doubtless forgot his own action in the Trent affair, 
when he publicly approved the conduct of Wilkes, subsequently^ 
disavowed by Lincoln. If, indeed, Lincoln did not, on the side, 
give Welles permission to act as he did, which is very probable," 
what was this approval but officiousness on Welles' part meriting 
signal rebuke? And if Welles did write with Lincoln's permis- 
sion, what was Lincoln's final action in apologizing to Great Bri- 
tain, but a species of camouflage unworthy a President of the 
United States. 

This deference, if not submission to his secretaries, is said by 
others to have been even more manifested by Lincoln with Stanton, 
his Secretary of War, than with Seward, his Secretary of State. 
John C. Popes declares that Lincoln and Stanton constantly inter- 
fered with military plans greatly to the detriment of military 



18 

success, and the history of the Virginia campaigns is a history of 
official blunders in the appointment by Lincoln of incompetent 
generals. Charles Francis Adams, Sr., declares in the same 
"Memorial Address" on Seward that Lincoln was "quite deficient 
in his acquaintance with the character and qualities of public 
men or their aptitude for the positions to which he assigned them. 
Indeed he never selected them solely by that standard." Welles, in 
his rejoinder, does not deny that such appointments were made, 
but retorts only by saying they occurred chiefly on the recom- 
mendation of Mr. Seward "who was vigilant and tenacious in dis- 
pensing the patronage of the State Department." This does not 
help the case. The very point against Lincoln is that he did not 
exert his own individuality sufficiently against a lot of impudent 
secretaries. It is impossible to suppose that any other man, in the 
whole list of Presidents, would have rested under such vassalage. 

Lincoln's weakness of character is aptly illustrated by his 
course at other times. He never could rise above the idea that 
the South was fighting for slavery, and though the Sout'h re- 
sented the suggestion as an insult he more than once proposed to 
his Cabinet to pay the South for their slaves, if they would return 
to the Union. But his Cabinet, for quite different reasons, je- 
sisted the project, and Lincoln submitted. Indeed, his very last 
act showed how incapable he was of withstanding the influence of 
men of superior power like Stanton. On his visit to Richmond, 
after the evacuation in April, 1865, he authorized the Virginia 
Legislature to be called together, and yet he had hardly returned 
to Washington when, succumbing to the vehement protests of 
Stanton, as Stanton himself says, he recalled the permission, ex- 
cusing himself on grounds which are plainly matter of after- 
thought.^® 

Much important detail is furnished by Dr. Clifton B. Hall 
towards enabling us to judge of Lincoln's character in his recent 
life of "Andrew Johnson, Military Governor of Tennessee." The 
object of the appointment was the restoration of Tennessee to the 
Union, but Lincoln, despite his professions of "charity," instead 
of selecting a cool, conservative person for the position, took An- 
drew Johnson — a man whom Dr. Hall describes as one of the most 



loConnor, Life of John A. Campbell, 174-198. 



19 

venomous and hated men in Tennessee. He not only took him, 
but stood by him, and condoned all his violence, which got him 
into fierce quarrels with all the Federal generals at any time in 
Tennessee. That Andrew Johnson was in large degree a dema- 
gogue, as Dr. Hall states, is undoubtedly true, and yet he had 
certain qualities, which exliibited under other conditions, com- 
mand our admiration and esteem, No one can tell how far Lin- 
coln would have allowed the radicals to go after the war in their 
reconstruction of the South. His action referred to in regard to 
the Virginia Legislature is not particularly encouraging, but 
Johnson's conduct is a matter of history. However violent he was, 
while the war was going on, and for a year later, he proved himself 
incapable of the meanness of continuing to persecute a defenseless 
and conquered people; and asserting his authority as President, 
as any self-respecting man would have done, he turned the trucu- 
lent Stanton out of office, thereby risking expulsion from his own 
high position at the hands of a crazy and malignant Congress. 

In prosecuting the war Lincoln appealed to a great idea — the 
Union — which he declared was his sole idea in prosecuting the 
war, but the old Union was founded on consent and the Union he 
had in mind was one of force. His war, therefore, was contrary 
to the principles of self-government expressed in the Declaration 
of Independence and to the modern principle of self-determina- 
tion, now the accepted doctrine of the world — a doctrine not 
only endorsed by the present President of the United Stat-es, but 
by both houses of Congress. In recent years, we have seen Norway 
and Sweden separate in peace, and much of Europe was recon- 
structed on new national lines. 

The truth is, there never was a war more inconsistent in 
principle than that waged against the Southern States in 1861. 
Besides the great territory which it occupied the Southern Gov- 
ernment placed in the field armies as vast as Napoleon's, and for 
four years waged a war on equal terms with the great and popu- 
lous North, aided by recruits from Europe and enlistments from 
the South's own population. Indeed, we have Lincoln's own state- 
ment that without the aid of the Southern negro troops he would 
have had "to abandon the war in three weeks."" As a matter 



1-TComplete Works of Abraham Lincoln, X, 190. 



20 

of fact the old Union consisted from the first of two nations which 
had been brought together by British taxation, and the South's 
fight for independence was only in obedience to the logic of the 
real facts. 

The present Southerners are glad to be free of slavery and are 
loyal citizens of the Union, but this is far from saying that they 
approve the violent methods by which slavery was abolished and 
the Union restored. 

In conclusion of this article on propaganda, I may cite a 
few sentences from Robert Quillen in the Saturday Evening Post 
for January 24, 1920, which the editors might have taken to heart 
when preparing their editorial about Plymouth Eock. 

"Since the purpose of propaganda is to present one side of a 
case, it is from its very inception a distortion of facts, and an 
avoidance of the whole truth. * * * Truth lies at the bottom 
of a well and we are poisoning the well. * * * Propaganda has 
made doubt^l^s of us all." 

Was the divine Pocahontas after all correct, when in her inter- 
view with Jobn Smith in England in 1616 she characterized the 
white race as hopeless liars? 

The exact language of Pocahontas was : "Your countrymen 
will lie much." 



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